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Friday, February 27

I followed a fabulous sketch from PageMaps. The paper is from my scraps bag and the flowers are silk flowers from the craft department. Green gingham ribbon is from walmart as is the green button. I used my Threading Water punch on green cardstock and the Happy Birthday embossing folder on blue DCWV cardstock. I was able to assemble this card in minutes and actually mass produced them for a card swap really easily. I hope they like them =)

Sunday, February 22

It's been a rough rough week here. My 9 year old had part 1 of his oral surgery on Wednesday and it went great. They prepared me for how badly he'd be feeling and how to ward off bad side effects, but within 15 hours he was chomping on chicken nuggets and french fries! LOL. He's recovered just fine, needless to say!

Thursday I woke up and promptly got sick everywhere. Before I had time to really figure out WHY I could be feeling like death, my 4 year old daughter started getting sick. Thank GOODNESS she's learned to make it to the bathroom to throw up. At least that room can be hosed down. LOL. By the evening I had spent 5 minutes of every 20 praying to the toilet that it would stop ALL day!

I must have passed out at some point in the early evening and my daughter, bless her heart, was smart enough to call Daddy for help. He rushed home and rushed me to the ER. I spent all night at the ER with IVs for fluids and a shot in the bum to help with nausea. By Friday morning I was able to keep fluids down so they let me go home. My daughter was released Thursday night after only a few hours. I am still not feeling 100% and haven't been able to keep food down, but liquids are fine. I am feeling decent so long as I stay DOWN. Trying to stand is a mistake.

Two things I learned from this experience? 1. ALWAYS keep your toilet clean because you never know when you will spend all day resting your face on it! 2. Just because you have nothing left to throw up doesn't mean you won't keep doing it! =( Turns out it was just a really bad virus, and of course it just needs to run it's course. The dehydration was the main issue. But I think I'm on the road to recovery. My daughter seems to have already made it.

One good thing about being stuck laying in bed all day, is I was able to do some digi scrapping on my laptop. Yay! How about a challenge to use 5 or more patterns. Here is my take and boy was it HARD!!!! I gave it a try though :)

It's a digi page made on scrapblog.com. My 5 patterns were: 1. spiderweb background paper, 2. pumpkin ribbon on the top right, 3. yellow pumpkin ribbon on botton left, 4. striped strip of paper on the right, 5. the paper behind the photo. It is a red streaked patterned paper I put orange vellum overlay over to get just the shade I wanted.

Thanks for looking =) It was a hard challenge to put 5 patterns (papers, ribbons, embellies, etc) on ONE page....but it was fun. Give it a try!!! And if you do leave me your link in a comment. I'd love to come see it!

Monday, February 16

From what I'm told...these are all the rage. I don't get it. I gave it a try and I STILL don't get it. It was super easy to make, but I guess I just prefer plain old full sized albums. LOL. In my scrapbooking group I co-own we are doing a challenge right now to create one of these little suckers so I had to give it a try. Overall I am happy with how it turned out! Maybe I'm just a little frustrated because I had to redo the pages a bit. Note to those that are going to try this....leave an inch to an inch and a half EMPTY and unembellished on the side that will be in the crease!!! LOL.

For my album I used lime and pink 'mom' themed papers I found at JoAnn's. Not sure of the brand as I didn't plan on posting it until after I was done =) LOL. The cover is pink double sided (one side is dark and one side is pale) mulberry paper. The white brads, gemstones and flowers are all from my stash. I used coordinating cardstock to create 2x3, 3x4 and 3x3 photo mats.

Here it is in all it's glory, including pictures of the inside pages I embellished.

If you would like to give a matchbook album a try I wanna see. Leave me a comment with your blog link so I can come look. Here is a super easy tutorial that my friend Leslie passed on to me. It's fool proof =). Meaning even I couldn't mess it up!!! Except that I did, but that's not the point. LOL!

Saturday, February 14

Thank you so much to ClassTools.net and their awesome random name picker, we have a winner of my blog candy! You just enter a list of names into the name picker and hit go and a fun little slot machine randomizes the list and spins round and round until it stops on one lucky name. Remember this bit of fabulous fun??

Well, the lucky winner is BONITA!!! You have one week to email chuckandchristina@yahoo.com and we can get your address and get this out to you! I hope you enjoy your goodies!!!!! Happy Valentine's Day!!!! Don't worry if you didn't see your name on the image below, that doesn't mean your name wasn't entered. It just scrolls around and around and happened to stop on this screen shot only displaying 6 of the names at a time =)

Sunday, February 8

Have you ever wanted to try a shaker box, but thought it sounded too intimidating? Well I am going to tell you a secret. It is one of the coolest effects and yet one of the easiest techniques around. You can make it as simple as a square with a square shaker. It can be as intricate as a Cricut cut paper piecing where the center shaker is cut in the same shape. I chose to recreate a cupcake I made a few posts back. I thought it'd be perfect for a birthday card, though I may add a candle if I find one that matches. =)

Here are the basics to making ANY shaker box. If you give it a try I want to see!!! So post a link to your blog post if you share or even a link to an online gallery. I just want to see!!!

Step 1: Cut out the diecut or paper piecing pieces you plan to use. I used a cupcake paper piecing from ScrapbooksEtc.com. The striped paper is Me and My Big Ideas and the cupcake is lily white sugar coated cardstock.

Step 2: Use your chosen punch to cut out the center. I have cut a 1" square. SAVE the scrap that is removed.

Step 3: Use the scrap punch to cut around on your transparency so that the finished piece of transparency is slightly bigger than the hole it will cover. Do the same for you backing paper. The one that will show through the shaker material. Make this one slightly bigger than the tranparency. You will have three sizes of squares. Your original scrap, a transparency slightly bigger than that, and a backing square slightly bigger than the transparency.

Step 4: Turn your paper (the one with the hole in it) and cover the hole with the transparency. Then use the foam tape to adhere it to the back of the cardstock. (holey cardstock, transparency, THEN foam tape). Make sure there are NO gaps in the tape. At this point (before you expose the second side of sticky on the tape) rub over the whole transparency with a dryer sheet. You will read below why.

Step 5: After exposing the back of the double sided foam tape you pour in your filler. I used Mainstays Glitter in bubblegum and Fashion Glass pink glass. Very gently pour in and cover with your backing paper. Make sure you put it down so that the backing paper will show the side you want when flipped over. Press firmly along the foam tape. If you need to trim the backing paper a bit, now is the time.

For this example, I made a cupcake shaker. I just tried to use up scraps so it can definitely be fancier with a little embellishing. You can make your shaker out of any paper piecing pattern that has a large area that can support a shaker. You can also cut out a diecut or even make your shaker square/round and simply embellish the finished product with embellishments to fit your theme. Also consider using 'shaker stuff' that is in your theme. For example: small buttons, confetti, tiny punches. The tip to rub a dryer sheet across your transparency after you are done cutting is important, before adhering, to avoid static build up that will leave you with a shaker that doesn't shake so well. =)

Saturday, February 7

This week's theme ends today and it is to create a layout 'all about me.' Here is my take on the challenge below. I was completely inspired by a sketch by Becky Fleck at Page Maps. I followed it nearly to a tee because it was just a perfect sketch. You should definitely visit her site....she has some of the best sketches I've ever come across!

Sunday, February 1

I had a problem using cheap glue sticks when I was desperate and out of my double-sided tape in the middle of the night one time. As a result, I had an old layout from 2006 completely all apart. All the embellies and the photo fell off and the cardstock was fading in spots where glue had been. So....I decided to redo it! Here is the finished layout!!

I used all scraps for the paper/vellum and the rhinestones are Finishing Accents self-adhesive rhinestones. I also used a sketch by Lesli Asay over at Dragonfly Time. She has some awesome sketches and beautiful work so go check out her blog!!! I only have 1 or 2 more 8.5 x 11 layouts left to catch up with the pics I had printed the other day, but I really need to get on my parents wedding pictures I am creating in 8x8, so that will probably be what I post for a while!

You can click the link above or the sketch to be directed to Lesli's blog!!

The Fine Print

All work is my own unless otherwise stated. I make every effort to link to the original inspiration whenever possible. All work is Copyright 2008-2014 by Christina Willman-Skinner. Feel free to use any of my sketches or ideas for personal use. I would so very appreciate a link to my work if you use it as inspiration...especially for a contest, challenge or publication. Thank you so much for visiting and I hope you have a fabulous day!!